Science Utopia

So many people agreed with me about the time & money thing, here is my vision of utopia:

Once upon a time, there was a place called Bell Labs. They gave their employees food and caffeine whenever they needed it, a place to sleep if they wanted to work late and crash, and plenty of toys to stimulate the imagination when they got stuck. They had great benefits and understood that their scientists would get more done and be more creative if they didn't have to worry about grocery shopping, commuting home, or looking busy just to look busy, nevermind paying the dentist or ferrying their kids back and forth from childcare (I don't actually know if Bell labs had any childcare, since I'm not sure they had many women working there, but we'll overlook that as a historical oversight).

I really do think that every lab should have a couch, if not several, a kitchen and a living room for breaks. There should be a television so we can watch the news- I have horror stories about people who went to work on 9/11 not knowing what happened because they never turn on a radio or tv, nevermind reading a newspaper.

The people who have vision and want to ask questions will give ideas to the people who are happiest just running the gels and getting the answers. All journals will be free and of equal quality, since peer review will be on the internet and open to everyone. Order of authorship won't matter. And tenure won't be decided by how many papers you publish or in what journals.

I actually kind of like the self-selecting model of science: the people who want to do it will do it because they want to, not because it has better benefits than any other job. So in my version of utopia, all jobs will have to have these perks, so people can pick their career for the right reasons and not feel like they're sacrificing anything. Instead they can choose based on their personal intellectual satisfaction with science vs. law vs. whatever other profession.